Blood sacrifice
by sophiesix
Summary: Relates how it came to be that Blackheath kissed Giulia. Follows Four Beginnings.
1. Chapter 1

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**Blood sacrifice**

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Relates how it came to be that Blackheath kissed Giulia. Follows Four Beginnings.

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Warning!! M for a reason. Surgical gore, violence, themes of sexual violence. Not a happy little tale.

This story takes place between Thaw and Degrees of Freedom, but should be read after Four Beginnings to avoid spoilers.

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"_Some think that blood sacrifices are a thing of the past, the distant past, the time of Abraham, or cannibals, or the Temple of Doom. The most powerful way to appease the gods, the renewal of existence by passing through death. But let me assure you, blood sacrifices are most certainly a thing of the present. A blood sacrifice is the most ultimate gesture you can make._ _The most powerful plea, the most rigorous requirement, the closest substitute for the most sacred thing of all, human life. 'A pound of flesh', and all that. Therefore, it should not surprise us that just as situations still exist, and will always exist, where ultimate gestures are necessitated, so, blood sacrifices continue, and will continue, to be made…"_

***

It was uncertain who was to blame, exactly.

It was Dorsey who had provoked the situation, continuing to tempt him. And though she had known his leg was injured, she had thought it was getting better all the time. Exercise could only be good for it, build it up. She had even cajoled a dingo pup from a reluctant housewife, presenting it to Ally as way of creating time for themselves: puppies required _much_ time spent Outdoors.

Blackheath had known his leg was getting worse, but thought he could manage it. That morning, his leg had felt like one huge bruise, and he had kept her hands away from it, so she never had the chance to know how bad it was.

He felt he should have been able to resist her temptation, and though he did, he never did for very long, because the truth was he had missed her too, and so when he succumbed to her attentions he was already over half way there himself. He loved the mischief in her eyes and the wickedness of her touch, and he wanted her just as much as she wanted him. They both felt they had some catching up to do. Though he had thought he could get her out of his system quickly, and rest then, he had forgotten how addictive she was, and how, like a drug, his need for her, and thus her power over him, only increased with each dose. Perhaps if he hadn't tried to resist her at all, things would not have built to such a head.

So that morning, when he stopped pretending to himself that he would resist her, he did so violently, pushing her up against the wall. And at the same time, she had wrapped her legs around his hips, and all the weight of his action was suddenly, forcefully, put on his legs. He had fallen to the ground beneath her, swearing wretchedly, having felt his thigh muscle tear itself apart. Beneath his dizzy eyes and clutching hands the blood was already spreading in spongey marks beneath the skin, and his thigh swelling darkly with heat and pain.

And it was because both felt the other should admit to some blame, and secretly felt that it had been their fault, that there was this silence between them now. The silence had quickly become a distance, because there seemed little point being close to each other when neither had anything to say.

***

The distance between them was echoed in the distance between the doctor and the leg. Dorsey stood on the far side of the room, silent, arms folded, and the doctor secretly wished he could do the same.

The local doctor spent much of his spare time hoping such cases never came to him, so he was living through a nightmare the longer Blackheath stayed his patient. Though he was an uncomplaining patient, accepting without a word the tight layers of bandaging that made his leg throb like a second heart, accepting indefinite, endless, insanifying bed rest, the doctor could not help but feel that Blackheath's dark eyes saw through his dithering. And sure enough, they both eventually had had enough, and forced him to do something practical.

Guarding his work with dire predictions, the doctor dug out fist sized blood clots from inside the thigh with shaking hands, trying to see between the connective tissue like taught violin strings the body had thrown down in a last ditch effort to hold things together. He saw as much as he needed to confirm his suspicions, then closed up the leg with broad, ugly stitches, like those on a corpse.

There was not enough blood supply to keep the muscle alive, he explained, with a measure of relief. Now he could confidently advise what he had wanted to do all along, but had needed to wait until circumstances forced his treatment to be appropriate. Without enough blood, the muscle would begin to die, its rotting fibres poisoning the rest of the body. The leg would have to go.

"Amputate?" Dorsey repeated, in a high brittle voice that would have blown away in the slightest breeze. But the doctor knew what needed to be done, and she was easily persuaded that this was the case.

Blackheath was not.

"You are _not _cutting off my leg," Blackheath growled, his voice rigid despite the giddiness of the pain and the fever. And through pleading and threatening and reverse psychology, he maintained his stance. And despite pleading and threatening of their own, the doctor refused to try anything more. They had rejected the treatment he had advised, and cherished, and he had stopped looking for anything else. Secretly he wished his patient would die and leave him in peace.

"Take me to Giulia," Blackheath told Dorsey, and finally she could see it was the only thing he would do, and therefore, the only thing that could be done.

Strapping the leg as firmly as she dared, she packed him into the backseat with stolen pillows, put Ally in the front seat, puppy at her feet, and drove.


	2. Chapter 2

2.

It was a bad time to be mobile. The purge that had kept them from going straight home was spreading to other areas, and humans everywhere were organizing and slaughtering anyone they else they suspected of being organized, or sometimes, just anyone else they could, to test their organization.

But through the times when she drove through smoky fields lit beautifully by the hazy orange sun, and could still hear gunshots near the homesteads, through the times when Blackheath was only talking to her in gibberish half sentences, and Ally wasn't talking to her at all, she kept her belief in the idea of Giulia, their salvation.

Giulia would save them from a fate worse than death; because Blackheath apparently felt that losing his leg was worse than dying, and had chosen to die slowly instead. And Dorsey knew, deep down, that she was the cause of the ruined leg. Dorsey was damnation, but Giulia was salvation, and so she drove through the madness in the darkness around them, through the day and through the night to find her.

"What the hell happened? It was well on the road to healing last time I saw," Giulia said in disgust when they arrived, stripping off the bandages immediately.

Dorsey was struck with a pang of jealousy that this woman had seen her partner so intimately, although she had known this before. It wasn't til she saw her in the flesh, so capable, so practical, that the reality of it began to sting.

Because Giulia was someone who _knew_.

And Dorsey was not part of that group of people who knew things.

"There's an awful lot you just don't know, isn't there Dorsey?" a teacher had told her once, sitting on her desk, and she had understood that he was making a pronouncement not just about that class, or that subject, but about her in general, like that her hair was black or her cheeks flat. And like those things, it was something that she would have to learn to live with.

Not knowing did not, in general, get her down. You could know an awful lot about something and still have changed nothing. And even not knowing anything, a single action could change the ball game instantly.

But Giulia was one of those people who knew things, important things, useful things. Like what to feed Blackheath to strengthen his thinned blood without straining his overstrained kidneys. Blackheath, she had come to realize, was also one of those people who knew things, though he kept it from her as if he didn't want her to feel diminished. Even Ally would grow up in his mold – as if she could do anything else. Even Ally knew you always checked your shoes for spiders before you put them on, that dancing barefoot in the corn was likely to encourage snakebites, and that sunscreen had to be reapplied several times a day to be effective. Ally held on to facts, instructions, knowledge, like it was treasure.

Dorsey remembered Blackheath and Ally lying on some hotel's bed doing her homework. Blackheath was insistent that she should be no more behind than anyone else, and quizzed her daily on something or another, writing out spelling lists, sentences to read out, math's problems, or dictation. Things that Ally would not touch if Dorsey tried to bring them to her attention, but that she would study for hours in the shadow of her Dad.

Dorsey felt, in that instant, watching them lying side by side, that they were part of a perfect sphere that had no place or part for her. But she threw away this thought almost instantly because she knew that this was her family, and she accepted without the shadow of a doubt that family _belonged_, that she belonged to them just as unequivocally as they belonged to her, no matter if one couldn't quite see where one's pieces fit.

There was a part of Dorsey that accepted whatever came her way, and there was another that liked to fight. Usually, she could accept that she was not someone who knew, but just then, the sting of Giulia made her want to fight. So she told Giulia about losing Ally, and finding her, and the doctor with the shaking hands and the relief in his eyes at seeing them go, just to show that she knew things too. But as soon as she finished talking, Giulia's silence made her realize her mistake. She had not proven that she knew things, all she had done was give Giulia another whole wedge of information that now Giulia knew too. And Dorsey would get nothing in return. So when Giulia handed her a list of medicines to steal from the Souls (Giulia _knew_, immediately, what was needed), she took it without a word and left.


	3. Chapter 3

3.

Giulia was pleased by many things in the turn of events. She was pleased with the medical and surgical challenge of keeping Blackheath's leg alive at the same time as his kidneys. She was inordinately pleased that the girl Blackheath was ready to die for in the Soul city was not, after all, a Soul, but a young girl who sat silently by his bed as if she didn't exist at all. And though she was displeased with the child's mother, who was obviously someone with whom Giulia could never compete, she was pleased to note a distance between her and Blackheath, and an obedience in the mother that she felt Blackheath could not respect.

And so she set about her work with the hint of smile, ignoring the butchery of the ignoramus doctor, scavenging a blood vessel from his good leg, lining it up to as many working blood vessels as possible in what was left of his shredded thigh, and Healing the two sets of tubes together with a delicacy that would have made a laceworker proud. Now all that could be done was wait to see how much would survive, and how much would die regardless, and remove each section of rotting meat before it clogged his kidneys with protein and ruined them forever.

So pleased was Giulia with life in general that she took the unprecedented step of accompanying Blackheath to Yanni's house to ensure things continued satisfactorily. And indeed they did, with the distance and silence between Dorsey and Blackheath only widening the longer his leg needed treatment, the thigh throwing up occasional challenges, but on the whole, surviving, and her father so relieved to have her back he bent over backwards not to aggravate her.

***

"What's with your Mum and Dad?" Giulia finally asked Ally one day, who had taken to following her around and watching her. Currently she was watching her clean her surgical instruments after removing yet another piece of Blackheath's thigh, his blood curling away in the water.

Ally liked Giulia: she was unapologetically and unambiguously anti-Soul, and also useful. Though Ally knew she must love her mother, she couldn't help but think Giulia much more worthwhile as a person.

"Are they together?" Giulia glanced at her, and Ally considered this. They hadn't been together for over a year, and, there were indications they might not be together in the future either. This seemed to outweigh the togetherness that she knew they had, sometimes.

"Not really," she said, picking the scalpel out of the bowl and setting it aside. Giulia said nothing, and her face did not change, but she laid out her instruments to dry particularly precisely that night.

And at the next morning's bandage change, in the soft morning light, when she massaged the blood through his thigh particularly gently, he wondered at it. He knew she had sacrificed a lot in saving his leg, neglecting her clinic, facing her father, and was impossibly grateful to her. He knew he would never be able to repay her in any meaningful way. So when she looked up at him, slowly, and parted her lips, slowly, and leaned towards him, he didn't move away. Though he didn't respond to her, either. He could not. But neither could he deny her what he knew she wanted.

***

It was only a kiss, and not a very long one, and certainly not one that led anywhere, except perhaps for Giulia, whom it led to realize two things. Firstly, that Blackheath was not yet attracted to her the way she was to him, and secondly, that Dorsey was a bigger coward than she had previously realized.

Giulia had seen the shadow in the doorway and knew it must be Dorsey, but she hadn't let that get in the way of her intentions. And Dorsey had eventually melted away. Blackheath had never known she was there, and it seemed, would never know, as Dorsey persisted in not confronting him over it.

Dorsey felt irretrievably shattered that she had witnessed the kiss. No one had even bothered to shut the door and try to hide it. It was as if they were saying that did not care if she knew, because they really did not care for her at all.

_She had not been enough_. Though Blackheath was, and had always been, enough for her, even when they were apart, she saw now that she was not enough for him, even when they were together. She saw that her love for him did not match his returning love, and that he was just like any other boy after all.

And this is what really hurt. For she had been so certain that he was not like any other boy, and this was why she had let herself fall in love with him. But now she knew, and it was miles too late; she had let him get his fingernail deep, deep under her skin, so that she could no more contemplate removing him than she could removing her own leg.

So she was trapped. And this made her see the uselessness of trying to do anything. It would not change him, who was only a boy, after all, and it could not change her, who was irredeemably lost.

_Si la chance n'est pas avec toi, pourquoi courir?__1_

***

She had a secret, this accepting Dorsey, though she could not accept The Kiss without also accepting a kind of constant, continual pain. She kept her secret to herself, though if you asked her, she would have been hard pressed to tell you why. Perhaps it was because she needed something entirely her own now that she knew Blackheath was not exclusively hers. Perhaps it was because she did not now know Blackheath as well as she thought she did, and could not predict anymore that he would like her secret. And so, like Schrödinger's cat, she preferred not to tell him. Perhaps she thought he would share this secret with Giulia too, and they would laugh at her, together. Perhaps it was because she feared he would not really care at all for her secret, just as he did not really care for her. Whatever the reason, she kept herself and her secret distant from them, and so never knew that Blackheath missed her sorely, and wondered why she kept away.

And so things might have stayed, but then their luck changed.

1 If luck is not with you, why run?


	4. Chapter 4

Ch.

The others came mid morning, when the sun really began to think seriously about heating things up, and Blackheath was freshly unconscious, safely sedated through the rigours of the day.

They silently surrounded the stately house in its lonely fields, and swarmed onto the verandah and through the lower levels in moments, pinning anyone they found to the floor and tying their wrists together cruelly. Ally was forever mortified that she had been taken so easily, without even the chance to defend herself, and sat in sulky silence for the rest of the day. Sulking, if one did it fiercely enough, didn't let one feel afraid.

Though the intruders were pleased with the generous stores of good food they had found, they were less than pleased with the catch of women, child, and elderly man, none of whom were the worthy enemies they were hoping to kill. They did not yet know that this exact prize was waiting for them upstairs, sleeping, delivered, it would seem, by Fate right into their hands.

But Fate had not reckoned with Dorsey.

***

She knew who these people were. If not individually, she knew them because she had driven through their rampage on their way to Giulia. She had saved him them, and she was not about to let them take him now. And she knew them from countless other situations where the powerful thought they had all the cards, right back to her childhood. Her nausea at what she knew she had to do was nothing compared to her refusal to accept the alternative.

She sized up each of the intruders individually, noting the degree of hunger in their gaze, the degree of cruelty, the lust for power and control. She soon isolated the leader, a man who would not let any of them do anything with his say so. She shivered to see the prime importance of control to him, knowing this would make him the most dangerous, but also knowing that it was crucial to controlling the others.

Yanni, Giulia, Ally, and herself had been made to kneel in the same room, still tied, spaced along the walls. Their guard was a minion with nothing but lust and excitement in his eyes, together with a degree of fear of his masters. The others gathered in the corridor to report their finds and receive their next instructions. Dorsey had looked away from the guard's gaze at first, but now she forced herself to meet it with a mix of fear, interest, and desire. A potent mix in a potent wrapping, she well knew. The guard was lost almost at once, and she held him in her gaze as she crept over to him and let him touch her, making sure she would always look the submissive one, not the perpetrator, when they looked from the corridor. And look they did, and just as she had hoped, the leader rushed in with a roar and cuffed the guard to the ground, hauling Dorsey away from him. Dorsey used the moment to cringe into him, letting her breast brush his fingers where they encircled her arm, tempting him with her fear and her touch, but all the time avoiding a direct confrontation.

He would not react well to knowing he was being manipulated. He had a frightening love of control.

Dorsey swallowed her sickening fear and concentrated on ignoring all her instincts that screamed that this man was dangerous and would hurt her. She already knew that. But knowing did not change what she had to do. And right now, she had to concentrate on making herself something that he would feel the need to control, something he would want more than exploring the upstairs. For she knew that he would not let the others explore without him.

But when he finished chewing out the guard, he pushed her away, returning to the corridor. He had his foot on the first dark wood step when she followed him out, for the guard didn't dare touch her now. The silence of the others made the leader turn from the staircase and see her, leaning on the doorframe in such a way that accentuated her curves and making sure her tightly tied wrists were temptingly visible too.

"You've got everything you need down here," she said, mixing a dash of fascination for him with the rebelliousness in her tone. The others snickered excitedly and their leader took a step back, away from the stairs.

"Oh you think so, do you?" he said, leaning right into her personal space.

"You don't scare me," she replied quietly, letting just a hint of her fear quiver the edge of her voice. She must make him feel confident he could conquer her, and at the same time make herself a worthy target. Disrespecting him in front of his troops ought to do it.

"You think you can take me?" he growled, and she could see the excitement flaring in his eyes as he grabbed her roughly. "You need a lesson in respect." Relief and despair flooded her as he propelled her to the nearest bedroom, locking the door behind them.


	5. Chapter 5

5.

Giulia, Ally, and Yanni watched all this in shock.

Giulia saw at once that Dorsey was doing what they all desperately wished they could; save Blackheath. It was a profound revelation for her, that Dorsey loved him so deeply that she would sacrifice herself in this way, this most repugnant of ways. Giulia knew that she could never, ever do it. She realised that she had underestimated Dorsey, and thought with the first hint of remorse, that should Dorsey survive, she would not dismiss her so quickly again.

Ally also realized something about her mother that she had never realized before. She had always wondered why her mother did not carry a weapon. Her father, she knew, always carried two or three at least, and felt this to be the minimum for any self respecting person. Her father had a preference for blades, and had taught her how to handle knives, how they were sharpened, how to throw them into a roast of meat so they stuck, and how to twist them out so they didn't. He showed her how to make knives out of glass, plastic, wood and metal, should one need to, so that one was never caught without. And even how to make another believe that you carried a weapon when you didn't, so no one ever needed to know that you had gone without. This was why she had, as one of the first things she did, palmed a knife from Charlotte's kitchen and hid it beneath her mattress, not because she was afraid of Charlotte, but because it was the natural thing to do, and that it felt unnatural not to have a weapon of some kind at your personal disposal. And she had found it very strange that Charlotte was so oblivious to weapons in general, that she didn't even notice the knife was missing. Ally even suspected she wouldn't have thought of it as a potential weapon even then.

But Charlotte was a Soul, and this excused her much. Dorsey did not have this excuse. But now Ally realized that Dorsey had a weapon she had never before noticed, though she had seen it every time she looked at her. Dorsey could use her body as a weapon. A weapon hidden in plain view, that when used skillfully, could save lives. Or, she suspected, take them. And she discovered a not-so-grudging respect for her mother, that might, given time, even grow.

And Yanni smiled as the tears slipped down his cheeks, remembering other situations, so similar in so many ways … the powerful, the weak, the love, the cruelty, the guilt that he had done nothing to stop it, knowing that there was nothing he could have done, there never was. He smiled because he knew that at the heart of it all was a love so strong it would stand in the way of Death himself. He had once known such a love himself – twice, really. Though it was now just as surely lost as the planet, it flowed through him just as strongly still, and this day had only brought it to the surface. And so he knew, though he would never say, that should Dorsey or Blackheath die today, their love would flow on just as strongly as his own.

***

The other intruders busied themselves setting up camp, dutifully avoiding both the upstairs and the other prisoners, and by the time the sun was setting and the heat of the day seeping away, they even had Yanni's food store cooking merrily away in his kitchen, making the prisoners sweat with guilt that their mouths watered whilst Dorsey's fate was unknown.

The leader appeared for dinner, oozing such contentment that Giulia could not help herself.

"What have you done to her! You have to let me see her!" she shouted at him, without moving from the floor. And then she realized she had said exactly the wrong thing.

"I don't _have _to let you do anything," he replied, pausing just long enough to let his soiled gaze linger on each of them, ensuring each of them felt dirtied and small. Then he continued unhurriedly to the kitchen, and ate with his men.

"We'll do upstairs tomorrow," he murmured, returning to the room, and this gave Giulia a rush of hope and anguish, for she knew that he would only be interested in returning if Dorsey were still alive.

And so the chill and the darkness gathered around them and crept deep into their hearts, and they settled down to await the light.


	6. Chapter 6

Blackheath preferred to work under the cover of darkness. Dizzy with No Pain, which was slightly better than being dizzy with pain, he had stood at the top of the stairs and listened.

When he had escaped the grip of the sedative, he had woken to an unnaturally silent house, and immediately reached for his knife. It was a movement so instinctual he did not even know he did it. Or have to know. He had crept to the top of the stairs, and listened to the intruders going to bed, noting where each went, and how many went where. Then he waited and listened to hear which would sleep, and which try to keep themselves awake and stand guard.

At last all was settled, and he eased down the stairs, keeping his weight on his good leg, slipped into the prisoners' room and slit the guard's throat before he could cry out. It was messy, making the floor slippery, so he preferred to kill the other two sleeping beside him with quick, precise stabs to the body. He untied Ally's hands, hating to blunt his knives on the coarse rope, and gave her a knife, pointing at Yanni. The he disappeared into the corridor with death in every muscle of his being.

***

Ally knew she had been given the easy task, and it rankled. What use was freeing Yanni? He would only continue to sit, waiting for the light. This precious blade could be put to much better use.

Creeping up to the door, she watched down the corridor for the twitch of shadows that would be her father, then she stole in the opposite direction, to the entrance. By the light of the moon, she could see a sentry here too, and eased out the door to meet him. He faced the night, watching the darkness with the casualness of the non-believer, feeling safe in a conquered land. That he should be attacked from behind didn't even make it into his headspsace.

She could not reach his throat, so holding the knife with both hands, she plunged into the side of his belly, angled up to prick under his ribcage, and she hoped, touch at his heart. He did not die as quickly as she had anticipated, not with the efficiency she had seen in her father's work. But this had given one unexpected bonus: it had given him time to turn and meet her gaze. She had seen the fear in his eyes, and she had liked it. Then there was the unfortunate result of him dropping to the floorboards with a terrible thumping, despite her frantic attempts to slow his descent, and seconds later, a door burst open in the corridor and the leader charged out, making straight for her, then pulled up short at her age and the blood dripping from her blade. She saw fear in his eyes too, and couldn't help but smile.

***

Blackheath was returning down the central corridor from killing the others when the leader jumped out not ten metres in front of him, stood there, still, as if posing for a demonstration in blade killing.

Blackheath was only too happy to oblige.

As the leader dropped, the entranceway was revealed, and he saw his daughter framed in the moonlight on the verandah. He hurried forward, worried why blood dripped from her hand. But when he reached her, he saw that he needn't have. He saw that she had become exactly what he had trained her to be, if a little earlier than expected. He had not taught her about how to be a child, or a human. He had not thought it was necessary to teach children these things. And she had become exactly what he had taught her to be. He touched her shoulder gently, breaking her spell.

"Good work," he murmured, a little sadly, and they returned to free Yanni and Giulia.

***

"Where's Dorsey?" he asked, struggling with Yanni's knots, but no one replied. Ally cut through Giulia's ropes quickly and she ran for the bedroom at once. Blackheath gave up and sliced through Yanni's ropes too, then set out to follow her. But Giulia had locked the door behind her.

"You're not coming in here," he heard her say distantly through the thick door, "Get my bag."

"Dorsey…?"

"She's here, and she's alive, so just go get my friggin bag,"

Blackheath went rigid and it was Ally that push passed him to knock on the door.

"I've got your bag, Giulia," she said softly, and the door opened a crack to let her in. Blackheath felt Yanni's hand on his shoulder, and mutely let himself be led away to rest his leg.


	7. Chapter 7

7.

Giulia knew that her fingers worked on a human body, but her mind needed not to understand this for a while. There was too much more blood than there should be, she thought, almost flustered, and she couldn't work out why. It was Dorsey who provided her with the answer.

"I lost him, didn't I?" she whispered, crying despite the No Pain. There were some pains No Pain didn't fix.

"Blackheath is fine," Giulia murmured, disliking having to talk to a patient while she was concentrating.

"No," Dorsey replied, indicating the blood, and Giulia finally understood.

"You were pregnant?"

"Yes," she breathed, her eyes dissolving under tears with the final confirmation of the past tense.

"You knew you were pregnant, and you still…?" Giulia could not understand her. Children were a miracle, and now Dorsey would not have any others. But Dorsey did not attempt to explain.

***

It was morning before Giulia stepped outside, found Blackheath, and told him what had happened. He limped into the room, his heart in disarray, and did not even notice that Ally watched everything quietly from a corner still.

Dorsey was asleep. Giulia had wanted her to rest before he saw her, and he did not want to wake her yet. But as he knelt beside her head, his own held by his palms pressed to his temples, her eyes opened and she smiled at him drowsily, a sadness lingering. He thought at that moment there was no greater pain than seeing that sadness in her eyes.

"Hey you," she whispered, reaching for his face, and he caught her hand against his cheek, trying and failing to hold her gaze. She tipped his chin til he looked at her again.

"Aren't I pretty enough for you anymore?" she said, and the line between his eyebrows deepened in denial as his face hardened to keep in his pain.

"Giulia told you…?" she said softly. He nodded brusquely.

"She said… she said he hurt you… " He couldn't keep a single thought still in his head, except that he wished desperately he had not killed the leader so quickly. He had brought her back here, and he had failed to protect her. He gave up trying to work his thoughts into a logical order, and so just said the first that hit his lips.

"I'm not worth that," he said, but Dorsey frowned, and he couldn't take that either, so though he wanted more than anything to make sure she knew how much he loved her, and how much he abhorred the thought of anyone else touching her, let alone hurting her, he couldn't, and leapt at once to the next thought.

"She said you were pregnant. She said, we lost…" but he couldn't talk about the child he hadn't even known existed. "How could you…" and her fingers brushed his lip into silence.

"I have all the children I need in Ally," she said, her voice glowing with pride, her eyes locked onto his, "isn't she the smartest, prettiest, strongest girl you've ever seen? Why would I want anything more than that."

He loved to hear her say this, but he could not accept it.

"We'll have another-"

"No, we won't."

"Yes-"

Then he realized what Giulia had been trying to tell him, when he hadn't really been listening, already floored by the other things she had said.

_No, we won't_.

*

Of all the things he had feared he would lose when he descended the stairs that night – his life, his mobility, the lives of those he loved, imprisoned somewhere below - not a single one of them were missing this morning. And the sun crawled up the sky like any other day, as if nothing _were _amiss.

But what he had not known to cherish, last night, what he hadn't ever thought to try to hold onto, was childhood. Today, and forever more, childhood would be a thing of the past in his life.

This was a loss that would never heal, that would never grow back, that was so much worse, somehow, than losing a leg.

And he wept.


End file.
